Black Out
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, SethRyan. Seth can't remember and Ryan's not talking.


Title: Black Out

Author: Candle Beck

Email: PG-13

Pairing: Seth/Ryan

Black Out

By Candle Beck

Seth wakes up when the thin line of sunlight coming through the crack in his curtains slides onto his face. His head feels all messy, moreso than usual, with fragments of dreams and songs ricocheting around at low speeds, confusing him.

He figures it's a Saturday, what with the sunlight all high and bright and striping across his face. He tries to remember what happened yesterday, last night, but can't. Something about streetlights in ranks like soldiers, standing in grass with no shoes on, an awful chemical taste in his mouth. Some other stuff, too.

It's all very obscure and Seth thinks he might have dreamed a lot of it, but he can't be sure.

There was vodka involved, though, that he'd stake money on. And possibly Red Bull—he seems to recall his heart beating very fast at one point. He's hungover enough that his hair hurts, his throat is all slick, his teeth grimy. His mind is moving very slowly and with extreme caution, looking for safe places to step.

Seth rolls into a sitting position. His head is throbbing, and his neck is stiff like he slept on it wrong, his jaw aching, but other than that, he seems to be in order. His jeans are on the floor with the pockets turned out, and there must be five dollars in change scattered around, glinting silver coins like landmines.

Seth needs a timeline for last night, a sequence of events, a synopsis. He needs to read the blurb on the back of the movie box, see what the critics said about it. He wants to see the trailer, get an advance copy from a kid in Japan. There's a blank space in his memory labeled, 'Insert Footage Here.'

He could go crazy trying to remember, and there's really no need for that. He can just ask Ryan.

Seth goes to take a shower and it's not till he's standing there waiting for the water to run hot, making faces at himself in the mirror, that he notices the smear of glitter on his hip, low enough to be covered by his boxers, in the flat triangle of skin between leg and stomach that they really should have a name for.

The glitter is silver and purple, a swipe about the size of a thumb, and Seth studies it curiously, brushing his fingers around its edges. He's got no explanation for it, not a clue. Maybe he was attacked by a pre-teen girl. Or a pixie of some kind.

Seth watches his reflection shrug. Probably there are more important things to worry about. Can't get distracted by details—that way madness lies.

He gets in the shower, turns his face up into the spray and when the water hits his eyelids, he sees a picture, a freeze-frame with white Polaroid edges, of Ryan's face, half-lit and half-shadowed, looking tired with his hair all screwed up and falling onto his forehead, and on Ryan's cheek, smudged on the side of his mouth, was silver-purple glitter, the very same.

It should have looked stupid, tough Ryan with a thirteen year old girl's makeup on his face, but it really didn't. It made him look. Expensive. Young. Glamorous. A casualty of the night, with marks left on him, stains and impressions, bruises maybe, under his shirt. It's not a good night if you come out clean.

Seth shoves the image away, sure that it must be untrue, gets Ryan's face out of his mind, and scrubs the glitter off, doing his best not to think of it as evidence.

He sighs. This feels like it's going to be a very long day.

Ryan's in the kitchen when Seth comes down, and the sight of him with his elbow on the table and his hand in his hair, washed over by sunlight the color of egg yolk, makes something else click like poker chips in Seth's mind: Ryan against a plain stucco wall, sitting on the carpet with his knee up, his forearm balanced and his hand dangling off. Ryan with his head back against the wall, smiling sleepily with his mouth stained Kool-Aid red.

Seth blinks, and the after-image or whatever it was disappears with a pop that he would swear is audible. Something weird happens in Seth's stomach, a curling warm thing way down under his ribs.

He clears his throat, and Ryan jerks his head up, looks at Seth with surprise and—what? Fear? No way.

Seth gives him a lopsided smile and slumps down across from him, pillowing his head on his arms. "Mornin'ryn," he muffles.

Ryan doesn't say anything, and Seth chews on the sleeve of his bathrobe, his mind still all unfocused and painted in watercolor. Impressionism, is what it is. You get all the way up close and you can see that it's just smears of color, smaller than fingerprints.

"Rywha' happen lassnigh?" Seth asks, then spits out his sleeve, lifts his head. "I beg your pardon. Let me try that again. Ryan, what happened last night?"

Ryan doesn't meet his eyes, staring down at his hands. Seth checks to see if maybe Ryan's got something written there, reminders or phone numbers, but there's nothing.

"You don't remember?" Ryan asks slowly, hooking his thumbs together.

Seth shakes his head, then grimaces sharply, as that aggravates his headache a lot. Little steel-toed boots high-kicking against the walls of his skull, chipping off bits of bone. Seth hums a brief refrain to fight it, and answers, "I know I got drunk. Definitely know that."

"Yeah."

Seth waits, but Ryan doesn't elaborate, just sits there with his eyes down, arms loose like his strings have been cut, pale shoulders and his wife-beater curving shadows. There's a dusk-colored mark on Ryan's neck, just above his collarbone. Seth squints at it like it's a hieroglyph, the shape of a mouth.

"Dude, did you get lucky?" Seth asks excitedly, wanting details and measurements. Ryan winces, snatches a look at Seth with his eyes wounded. Seth is taken aback. "What?"

"You really don't remember?"

He shakes his head. "Already told you, man. But you remember, right? Or were you off somewhere getting busy? Did you abandon me?"

Ryan winces again, and Seth's confusion is huge now, it's the size of a bear. He cradles his head in one hand, dreaming about coffee. "You should explain stuff to me now," Seth tells Ryan.

Ryan lifts his eyes and Seth is struck again, that picture of Ryan's face, glitter on the side of his mouth, and the angle's all wrong, the shadows are in different places, because Ryan was . . . looking up at him? Even moreso than usual, from his knees, and Seth can think of a million different reasons why Ryan might have been on his knees last night, but none of them feel familiar.

"You got drunk," Ryan says carefully. "We were over at some kid's house. I don't know who. Somebody. You got. Really drunk." He pushes his fingers on the table, making little squeaky noises. "I lost track of you. Then I found you. Then we came home."

He stops talking, and Seth hikes his eyebrows up, which for some reason makes his head hurt even worse. "Are you, like. Are you not telling me something?"

Ryan's shoulders draw up like wings, curving in, and he shakes his head, whispering almost too low to hear, "I can't believe you don't remember."

More interesting by the second, and Seth leans forward. "Remember what? What'd I do? What'd you do?"

Ryan tears his hand through his hair. "Nothing," he says with his voice dull. "We came home. That's all."

Seth studies him and doesn't believe him and that's entirely new, he's not used to not believing Ryan. He starts to feel sick, a slow nauseating roll in his stomach.

"Why won't you tell me?"

Ryan looks at him, bruises under his eyes and his bottom lip chewed almost to bleeding. Seth's never seen him like this; fear and doubt are Seth's trademarks, and it's important to stay consistent.

"Ryan?" He wants to reach out, touch Ryan's shoulder or curl his fingers in Ryan's wife-beater and pull it out, or do a bunch of other things that Seth can't find a decent explanation for.

Ryan jerks his head to the side and opens his hands carefully on the table. He's trembling—none of this makes any fucking sense.

"Nothing happened." He meets Seth's eyes, solid and steady, and Seth is abruptly terrified, because that's what Ryan looks like when he's lying, and Ryan doesn't lie to Seth.

"Dude-"

"Nothing happened," Ryan says forcefully, making Seth want to check for steel under his skin, ice water in his veins, protective coating and superpowers. But Seth can't breathe.

"Don't lie to-" Seth tries, but Ryan's moving then, harsh arc of his arm and his fist slamming into the table, almost splintering it, which fits with the superhero image, and makes Seth jump and nearly bite his tongue in half, and something gives way in his chest.

"Nothing happened, Seth," Ryan says, the third time because it's the charm, and Seth sinks back, his eyes feeling like they take up his whole face, all the light in the world flooding in at once and making him fiercely, desperately blind.

Ryan stands, his chair scraping like the floor's a blackboard. He's got that kicked-puppy look back on his face, Seth's first memory of him but something he hasn't seen it in better than a year, and it makes him want to pull Ryan down to the carpet, videogames and cereal with marshmallows in it, pull Ryan down and fix him again, pull Ryan down and hold him in place with a hand on his forehead and a hand on his chest, pull Ryan down and lick his neck and bite his mouth until.

Seth's heart stops, and he falls out of his chair, landing hard on his shoulder and barely able to rasp Ryan's name, but he's too late and Ryan's gone.

THE END


End file.
